Rauner Says Cash-Strapped State Needs To Borrow $480 Million

According to the US Census of Government, Illinois has more local units of government than any other state in the nation at 6,963.

Suggestions by the task force include allowing voters to dissolve local governments by referendum and imposing a minimum four-year ban on the creation of any new governments, save those created by consolidating two or more. But she said attaching measures that would weaken labor unions could derail those efforts. “Recommendations that include anti-union poison pills make passage almost impossible”.

Rauner insists that any tax increase be accompanied by “structural reforms” such as a property tax freeze and curbing union influence.

The report – released to the public Monday after nearly a year of work by the task force led by Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti – comes with 27 recommendations toward both goals.

Unions have said those changes would drive down wages and benefits and hurt working families.

DIXON – Now that the Local Government Consolidation and Unfunded Mandates Task Force has issued its report, a local lawmaker who sat on the task force says it’ll be his job to get those recommendation pushed forward and eventually voted on by his fellow lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.

Bruce Rauner recently unveiled the recommendations of a task force that are created to streamline local government and unburden taxing bodies from unfunded mandates.

While the report doesn’t recommend any specific units of government to consolidate, it does emphasize the need to place the decision in the hands of local voters and to make it easy for local governments to consolidate if they choose to do so, Batinick said.

In conjunction with that recommendation, there is a proposal to remove the 126-square-mile cap on townships to allow for larger consolidation of two or more townships into one, as well as a recommendation that would allow the merger of general township road and bridge districts that maintain less than 25 miles of road.

-Allow the Illinois State Board of Education to give school districts incentives to consolidate. The Public Assistance program provides reimbursement up to 75 percent of eligible costs incurred by local governments as they dealt with the disaster and subsequent recovery.

-Allow school districts to use third-party contractors, rather than union employees, for services such as transportation and building maintenance.

-Merge downstate and suburban police and fire pension funds into one pension investment authority.